$400,000 later, little to show for health work

Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007 | 7:14 a.m.

A public agency created nearly two years ago by Nevada legislators to improve health care for minorities has spent almost $400,000 - with little to show for itself as it holds its first local public meeting today.

The office has produced one thin report of little use. Its Web site calendar for the year to date is nearly empty. It took more than a year to form an advisory committee, and the committee has met just once.

Neither Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, who sponsored the bill creating the agency, nor the agency's former manager, Larry Gamell, returned calls seeking comment.

"I'm aware that a lot of things should be done," said Mae Norris, interim agency manager. "It's just that they're not."

Launched in January 2006, the Nevada Office of Minority Health has scheduled its first public meeting in the Las Vegas Valley today, a "health disparities conference" at the offices of Nevada Partners, a local nonprofit organization. Invited speakers include Clark County Commissioner Lawrence Weekly, state Sen. Steven Horsford, and various community leaders and health care workers.

Interviews for a permanent agency manager will take place Thursday, two months after Gamell retired. The position pays $76,580 annually.

The agency was created to address the needs of minorities who, in the Las Vegas Valley, make up about half the population.

But critics of the state office say it has fallen short in addressing the valley's Hispanics, about 25 percent of the area's population and 39 percent of the state's uninsured, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Asked what her office had done to promote health care for minorities, Norris said she attended a meeting in support of a state-run health insurance program for children. It was held at an elementary school where 73 percent of the students are Hispanic. She doesn't speak Spanish and said the office had been unsuccessful in hiring bilingual staff.

Arcadio Bolanos, former board member of Latinos United Celebrating Health (LUCES), a local nonprofit organization, said "it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that (the agency) has to have someone representing the (Hispanic) community."

"They're defeating their own purpose," he said.

The office filed a report with the governor's office this year that was, according to the law that created the agency, supposed to include the agency's findings and recommendations.

But there was none.

Four of the report's 10 pages were a list of partner agencies.

"Due to time constraints and other issues, there's not much in the report," Norris acknowledged. Among those other issues, she said, was staff turnover. The office has shrunk from three to two staff members in recent months.

Richard Whitley, deputy administrator for the Nevada Health Division, said the report was submitted to the Legislative Counsel Bureau without comment. Lawmakers this year asked the agency to develop more detailed benchmarks for the future, he added.

As for the agency's Web site, Norris said its paucity of information was an oversight, also because staff turnover.

And she didn't know why it took more than a year to form the advisory committee. Composed of community members from the different minority groups, the committee met for the first time in May. Neither Norris nor state officials could provide contact information for committee members.

When the agency was launched, Nevada was one of only five states without one.

Twenty months later, with a new manager yet to be chosen, Norris remains optimistic.

"Maybe now we can make this office what it should be," she said.